Inside The Bills

The Bills practice squad has been a unit of turnover this season with the active roster often in need of reinforcements this season due to injury. In this instance however, Buffalo saw one of their practice squaders signed by another NFL club.

SS Dominique Harris was signed by Tampa Bay to their active roster. Harris has spent the entire season on the Bills practice squad and offers great size for the position. He was simply caught in a numbers game at safety here in Buffalo with a lot of veteran talent in front of him.

Buffalo now has a vacancy on their practice squad, which they’re expected to fill sooner rather than later.

Not long after the close of the team’s mandatory minicamp, the Bills parted ways with one of their rookie safeties.

Rookie free agent safety Brett Johnson was waived by the club Friday afternoon just hours after the last spring practice.

Johnson was in a difficult numbers game from the beginning with veterans at both strong and free safety. Johnson was a free safety in his time in Buffalo, but his reps on defense were very few and far between.

The only rookie safety left on the roster is undrafted Temple product Dominique Harris.

With veterans Donte Whitner, Bryan Scott and George Wilson all capable of playing strong safety, reps have been extremely hard to come by for Harris in the practice setting.

Such is the life of a rookie free agent at times. You want to show you have what it takes, but your reps are so limited, especially in a situation where the coaching staff needs to school up the vets on the new scheme as much as the rookies and you’re in a tough spot. We’ll see how things pan out for Harris moving forward.

Buffalo has a good history of finding quality talent among their undrafted rookie free agent signings. With names in their past like Jabari Greer, Jim Leonhard and Jason Peters there’s a good track record. This year’s group for the Bills could produce another couple of names that stick.

Bills head coach Chan Gailey hasn’t been in Buffalo long so his familiarity with the team’s history of scooping up quality rookie free agents, but he’s been around a lot of undrafted talent before and likes what this group offers.

“I don’t know what has been here before, but I’ll say it’s one of the better group of college free agents that I’ve been around,” Gailey told Buffalobills.com. “I think it’s a high quality group and if I don’t miss my guess, there will be guys that compete and be right there for jobs. If not top jobs, at least on the 53-man roster.”

Some of Buffalo’s better performing rookie free agents in the recent rookie minicamp were S Dominique Harris and WR Naaman Roosevelt. When the pads go on however, it’s likely that more of the now 14 member group will have some standouts.